Interesting photographic history/steamboat image

I saw that and wondered the same thing, Travis. The photo is from the Cinci library.

Fred Way wrote that it was early on a Sunday when Messrs. Fontaine and Porter hauled their equipment to the roof of a building on the Newport waterfront to snap the series of metal plates that make up the panarama of early Cincinnati. Hence all respectable persons would be in church.

It looks to me as if it might be a couple of rousters pondering their lot on a beached out coalboat that had seen better days.

Full of People

Where did they get that thought? The F&P daguerrotypes are FULL of people. Look at Plate Two. There are groups of men standing around the public Landing on the west side of Cassilly (sic) Row - even a carriage full of people. At the time, Stephan Foster worked at Number Three Cassilly Row, the storefront with the white awning. There are over twenty mages of people standing around that I counted.

Look closely at the steamboat BROOKLYN, Plate Three, and you will see crew members along the boilers on the Main Deck. And there are two men on the roof on the after end. Looks like a chicken coop up there, too, the one with the slatted walls. Two images show moving people up on the Boiler Deck, which I found exciting as it shows movement frozen in time only 93 years before I was born - comparable to 1917, today, the year my parents were born. Photography is not so very old, but these daguerrotypes are better, in clarity, than almost any professional digital camera made today. It would take over 170,000 pixels to match what these copper plates, made in 1848, recorded and without the longevity of the metal plates.

My favorite-named boat, the CAR OF COMMERCE, shows well on Plate Two.

Plate 3 also has a clear view of the "H. ALBRO MAHOGANY SAWMILL", the wood shop belonging to Mr. Henry Albro, of Covington. His widow, Harriett, built my formed home on Russell Street in 1874. Henry died around 1865, but we traced his company to at least 1904, the same year Mrs. Albro died, but I don't think the two are related.

Go to this extrodinary link for the best look, possible, at all the plates:
Cincinnati Daguerreotype :: University of Rochester

Then go to TOOLS, and FULL SCREEN. Then to the bottom right of your computer and enlarge the picture where the magnifying glass normally shows '100%'. Enlarge the screen as far as you can (after 600%, my screen wouldn't get in any closer), but at those settings, you almost get the sensation that are actually there... made me feel like I was intruding into another time, but if I could, I would love to go into the picture frame and onto the Cincinnati waterfront at that very moment, my favorite time of any, where I wish I could have been -- where I could step aboard any steamboat and ask for a job.

*RE: Cincinnati Panorama, 1848*
Steamboating colleagues:
Thanks for drawing our attention again to the classic Fontayne & Porter plates of Cincinnati, 1848. These images recognized as the earliest 'known' of steamboats, urban history; also earliest views of rolling rail cars at the eastern end of the landing including the LITTLE MIAMI RAILROAD depot. There does exist in France an even earlier daguerreotype taken some years before 1848 during the experimental stages of the process showing a man standing by a street lamp possibly having his shoes shined. Blurred but clear enough to discern. The process difficult to do, expensive with no workable negative. Sam's right about other figures in those scenes. There was more activity than we would have imagined that day but with people, horses, wagons in motion the appear as feathery streaks. Enlarging down, down on each scene is like peering into infinity with clarity revealing unknown features. The Strader mansion appears with window shutters etc.

Capt. Fred Way and Carl Vitz, then of the Cincinnati Public Library, tacked the identification, interpretation of these plates back on/around early 1950s producing then a scholary treatise. The Eastman labs have just accomplished a delicate cleaning/ restoration/preservation as mentioned in Sam's posting. The actual photographing time was long with the images being directed in mirrors to avoid the 'reversing' problem. Look close and you'll see some boats at the western end of the landing with steam visible. The more we look the more we find. Rick and M'Lissa Kesterman did another definitive examination/identification of the plates several years before Eastman. The Cincinnati Public Library has a new interactive web site view of the scenes with much information old and new provided. Shipyard and I have agreed for years that one of our favorite boat views is the CAR OF COMMERCE.

PBS aired a program a year or so ago showing the present day work using the daugerreotype process for portraits by a man in New York by special commission. Break out you wallets if you want to have one taken. A great discussion here.

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati.

It's not Daguerrotype nor yet steamboats, but about thirty some years ago Randal Cochran got ahold of a book called, if memory serves, The Silver Sunbeam. The book revealed how to make tin types which were similar to Daguerrotypes in some ways, among them that there was no negative and the resolution was superb. He decided that we would try to do this...I was enlisted because I worked for a chemical company and could find out what some of the old chemical names really were...and get them. He, and his dad before him who photographed steamboats, was the photographer. We made plates, coated them with collodian (sp) and sensitized them with a light-sensitive chemical...a silver salt if I remember correctly. We loaded the plate in the back of a Speed-Graphic camera and exposed it. I had a pickup truck with a cap that we used for a portable dark room and we took the show on the road. We had the exposure time with the lens availble down to about six seconds. We went to White Hall one time to a Civil War reinactment event and took photos of soldiers in their uniforms...we were going to make fortune! We discovered how HOT it can get in the back of a closed truck in the summer time while developing them. We also found, that over time, the photos were not adequately fixed and would fade. But we DID take some dramatic photos...one of a sergeant in his greatcoat standing with one foot on Cassius Marcellus Clay's stone bench and leaning on his knee. The photo of the soldier was tack sharp but the tail of his greatcoat was blowing in the wind and thus blurred...a very dramatic shot with White Hall in the background. Lotsa fun but too much work! Cap'n Walnut.

There may be a lot of people in view, but where are the wagons and drays and teams that would be on the wharf on a work-day? In 1848 people took the sabbath very seriously.

Rand Cochran

Randy's father, Rand Cochran, was a celebrated Cinti Enquirer photographer, some years back, and a favorite of Betty Blake's as the "Official DELTA QUEEN Photog" - until Bill Muster came on the scene. Rand's shot of Captain Mac McMurtry taking a smoke break on the GLS wharfboat won a DQ photo contest Betty organized.

Willie and Buster's Whirlwind Tour of the World - Captain Mac

*RE: Horses & Drays, 1848*
Hi, Alan & steamboating colleagues:
Examine better conventional enlarged copies of the Cincinnati Panorama, 1848 and, indeed, vague, misty 'ghosts' of wagons with horses in action can be seen. No doubt the newly treated, stabilized original plates from Eastman will show even more. Portraits of individuals were somewhat of an ordeal having to sit perfectly still often times with a kind of rod or neck frame behind to steady the head. A real ordeal for many. Not many subjects smiling as to do so would blur the mouth, not to mention most had bad teeth. To portray the face smiling in oil portraits and early photography was considered not proper. One early plate taken in England shows a still young Queen Victoria smiling--a first for the queen and for photography in general.

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati

The Cincinnati I loved

These were the same streets I walked when I was first associated with the DELTA QUEEN; in the area called "The Bottoms". Block after block of these very structures survived the ages until the "Third Street Distributor" and that horribly ugly "Riverfront Stadium" demanded the demolition of the Cincinnati I loved. Nothing was spared. Had some of those wonderful survivors of the Cincinnati of Fontayne and Porters historic daguerreotype been kept and restorded, what an attraction the "Old Town Cincinnati" would be today! They, like the inclines, streetcars, the canal, and the DELTA QUEEN were all victims of shortsightedness bordering upon stupidity. I'm amazed to see the Roebling Suspension Bridge still standing.

Nothing has been said about the lenses these photographers must have had on their cameras. They had to be superb.

Frank X. Prudent;23665 wrote:
It looks to me as if it might be a couple of rousters pondering their lot on a beached out coalboat that had seen better days.

Upon second or third look, I think that it is the landing flat for the Covington ferry that the two are loitering on. It too looks as if it has seen better days.

*RE: Lenses/cameras in 1848*
Hi, Lexie & steamboating colleagues:
Good point about quality of lenses in those days and I don't know the answer. Rick/M'Lissa Kesterman along with John Fryant could shed some light. The cameras now in the Howard Steamboat Museum were also of extremely high quality as evident in the many fine Howard photos. John Fryant and I discussed also the use of some kind of telepho lenses in later years [Not in the1848 views]. German, French, American lenses were of top quality for cameras and telescopes/micrscopes in years past with Asian camera/lense makers moving into the market in recent years. I have a vintage German 'Retina IIa' reflex camera here with Schneider-Kreuznach lesnes like diamonds. With a separate hand light meter it still produces the best photos I've ever taken even above digital. Who knows more on this?

R. Dale Flick
Coal Haven Landing, Ohio River, Cincinnati

The Daguerrian Society

The Daguerreian Society

Lenses

I'm certainly no expert on anything, but if you stop most any lens down far enough, you will get a sharp image (pinhole camera effect). This limits your flexibility to shoot anything hand-held or moving. When taking builder's photos, Howard no doubt had a tripod and many of his subjects were not moving so he could afford a looooong exposure time for tack sharp results...not to say he din't have a fine lens. It is when you get into the "fast" lenses admitting tons of daylight at a snap that quality really rears its head. I learned what little I know about f stops and photography from Wayne Munson who loaned me an ancient 5 x 7 wooden view camera not too far removed (if at all) in sophistication from that of Porter and Fontaign. I had to focus on infinity and measure the focal length and then the effective diameter of the lens. Then you can calculate the "speed" of the lens...which I did. This one was f8; very slow by modern standards. This too would take fine photos if you could stand buying cut film and having it loaded in your holders and then having it developed and printed! You deliberated a bit before you set up the tripod, mounted the camera, aimed and focused on the ground glass under a black cloth hood, shut the lens, inserted the film holder, removed the blinder from the film-holder,guessed at your exposure time, set it and a made the shot by squeezing a bulb so as not to disturb the camera. Then if you did not remember to replace the blinder you ruined what you just did! You had to keep in mind which film holder had been exposed and which not; each had two sides! Gives me tons of respect for those old-time photographers. I've beem told the difference between a professional and an amateuer photographer is that the professional does not show you ALL of his or her pictures...only the best ones! Sigh, I still tend toward showing ALL!

Photographs which require a very long exposure time, i.e., several seconds, will not show people who do not stand still. If they are moving they just disappear in the photo print, as if they were never there. Sometimes you will see a person in a print as a ghost-like figure. That person was moving very slowly when the exposure was made. I suspect that's what happened in the Cincinnati panorama, why it does not show many people. Most of them were on the move and they just didn't register on the film.

Thanks for that info. Sorry it took me so long to find it. I took a photography course in college, back in the Dark Ages, and we were required to take pictures with a view camera, accordian pleats, film holders, and all. One, and perhaps the only, advantage of that kind of camera is that you could adjust it to get the lines of a building parallel and eliminate distortion.

Yeah, Lex, you could do that if your view camera had an articulated back mount. Some of the simpler view cameras din't have that feature. Now you can straighten out that distortion in PhotoShop and perhaps other photo bending and blending programs! Cap'n Walnut

Yep, it did. That was one of our assignments. Those cameras belonged to the school. Most photography was done with our own 35mm slr's. It was all b&w so's we could spend hours in a dark room.